


The Whole Mad Tale

by Kaesa



Series: Founders of Hogwarts [5]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Dark, Friendship, Gen, Historical, Introspection, Meta, Murder, One Shot, POV Third Person, Pastfic, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-03 00:05:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesa/pseuds/Kaesa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rowena thought she had gone quite mad before her husband died, but it's hardly anything compared to the aftermath.  WARNING: There is nothing explicit in this story, but it does deal implicitly with spousal rape, murder, mourning, and depression.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Whole Mad Tale

The castle aches.  That's what it feels like to Rowena, who, if she was trapped during her first five years of living here, is now uncomfortably aware of the terrifying chilly emptiness that stone walls can mean.  Even with three dogs and a four-year-old curled under the covers of her bed, even with fires and heating charms and all manner of rich furnishings, Rowena feels cold and alone.  Privately, she is terrified.

Not, of course, that the castle is empty.  There are the dogs, of course -- Rex was Armand's favorite, but Rowena thinks Auctor, Magnificat, and Caeli are better-natured.  Of course, due to the preference shown them by the lady of the castle, they are quickly becoming pudgy.

There is also her daughter, but Helena is four, and doesn't understand about the hollowness of the castle's stone halls.  All she understands are the stories Rowena tells her, of clever Odysseus and loyal Penelope and grey-eyed Athena.  It never occurs to her that Odysseus is a bastard and a half, that Penelope really deserves better, or that Athena is a bloody unhelpful patron goddess, when you come right down to it.  Helena is hardly company.

And there are the servants, of course.  Rowena quite likes the head cook, Frideswide, who is always very sensible for a Muggle, but she just can't get her head around the idea of human servants.  Humans are simply not _meant_ to be servants, she feels; they are meant to be masters of house-elves, who obey orders cheerfully and don't expect payment or conversation, and are comfortingly small and funny-shaped.  Human servants, even _Muggle_ human servants, unnerve Rowena deeply, and so she does her best to ignore them while making awkward polite conversation with them.

She rather suspects they are all laughing at her, down there in the kitchens.

It makes her feel infinitely worse.

And then, of course, there is the library.  But even this keeps her no company, for all she finds in the library are shadows of her husband; it is filled with books of theology insisting that she is going to spend eternity in a firepit reeking of brimstone, or that she doesn't exist, or both at once.

Sometimes she wonders if they're right.  Perhaps magic _doesn't_ really exist, Rowena considers.  She sends another heating spell at the fireplace and turns the page.  Perhaps it is all just an elaborate hoax that some Pan-like dark god has perpetrated upon the weak-minded and old-familyed.  Perhaps the whole mad tale is true.

She tries to keep in mind that this is the emptiness talking -- that so little human contact for years and years would make anyone start to think that the very understanding of the world they have grown up with is a fiction, a conspiracy designed to harvest souls for some malign end.  Because the very thought is ludicrous.  Of course.

Rowena despises gods on principle, because, as they never do anything for her, she sees no reason to do anything for them, particularly since, as they're _gods_, they shouldn't need or care for mortals mucking about in their grand schemes.  She feels that an omnipotent being demanding sacrifices and prayers is rather like summoning a house-elf to relight a fire, when a few words and a simple twitch of the wrist ought to do just as well.

But she _must_ wonder: is she evil?  Is she even real?

The answer to the first question is fairly obvious to her.  Yes.  Rowena is evil.

Lord Armand Ravenclaw lies buried in the churchyard not more than a mile away, and it is Rowena's hand -- or rather, Rowena's careful application of her knowledge of poisons -- that put him there.

Owing, perhaps, to this conclusion, Rowena is greatly reassured when she considers the possibility of her non-existence.  Perhaps, as the magic is clearly a figment of her imagination, the murder is also something she made up.  After all, potions are a sort of magic, and if they don't exist, surely she can't have killed him.  Or, even better, Rowena herself does not exist and never has.  She might be like Penelope or Athena; she deserves better, perhaps, or is bloody useless, and is certainly a bitch and a half, but either way, it doesn't actually matter because she never was.

She wonders if her insanity will leak over into her daughter.  Fortunately, Helena continues to be more interested in the prospect of sweets than she is in philosophy.

And as she sits in the library that spring, as the snow begins to melt, and freeze and melt again, she realizes that perhaps, though she never loved him, there is something of Armand she wishes to keep alive.  He loved his books far more than he ever loved his wife.  And though she doubts he would be pleased, she begins, almost mischievously, to quietly sneak new books into his collection.

First there is the bestiary, with its drawings of ant-lions and thestrals and elephants, each more farfetched and bizarre than the last.

Then, on a rare trip to London, she comes upon a glorious little work entitled _Defecti de Hermes Trismegistus_, which is at once sarcastic, bitter, utterly cruel, and exactly what she needs.  It begins by calling its subject "the thrice-greatest idiot of magical theory" and goes right on from there.

Other books make their way into the library: a very rare copy of the _Odyssey_, a somewhat less-rare _Aeneid_ (she has always been curious as to why the Romans so loved a hero who'd had to consult his mother on everything, but kept the book on principle) and several cookery books she had bought for Frideswide, who, it transpired, could not read and absolutely refused to learn.

Gradually, Armand's old library becomes a hodgepodge of books on everything from Muggle medicine to the habits of dragons.  She even obtains a battered old copy of the _Scrolls of the Animagi_, which, after much confused skimming -- as the bloody thing is as mystical as a drunken prophetess with Extended Metaphoritosis -- Rowena finally takes in to be rebound.  She begins working on it out of boredom; she takes scrap parchment and scribbles possible meanings out, and then cross-references until she's got at least half a page worked out, and perhaps, by the time she's finished the whole book, she will follow through.  Or perhaps she won't.  She suspects she'd be something unpleasant, anyway.  A lizard, perhaps, or a toad.  It doesn't much matter, though, as the book is a happy distraction from the empty, hollow castle.

And then an owl arrives with a letter.

Helga had written to her often at first, but then Armand had found out and Rowena had had to ask her to stop.  Still, every now and then, one would trickle in, under cover of night -- offers to kidnap Rowena ("I can grow a giant pumpkin, see, and then at midnight we'll ride up under cover of darkness..."), or of legal loopholes ("You could say you always wanted to be a nun!  It just might work!") which she invariably ignored.  She would have written to Helga about his death, but she simply cannot bring herself to write happily about the murder she has committed, and she is terrified that Helga will find out.

But Helga seems to be both perfectly aware that Armand is dead, and perfectly unaware that Rowena has killed him.  "You can't hide from me forever -- you _are_ still alive, aren't you?  I've heard he isn't.  Good riddance," the letter says.  "At any rate, I know this might sound a bit odd, but you know that nice bloke Basil I mentioned a letter or so back?  The duelist?  We're to be _married_ in a few months and I refuse to let it happen without my best friend there.  So you're coming whether you like it or not."

And perhaps, Rowena thinks, perhaps she can bluff her way through this one.  Perhaps she can go, and perhaps Helga won't notice what's happened to her, or the way the hollowness of the castle runs through her like veins in marble.

"Yes, please, I'd love to come," Rowena writes back.  "Oh, and you'll get to meet Helena!"


End file.
